


All His Old Haunts

by kehinki



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 23:59:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kehinki/pseuds/kehinki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s 2012—two-thousand-twelve—twenty-twelve—he’s still not sure what sounds right (neither, because either way, the numbers sound awkward and clunky in his mouth). It's 2012 and James Barnes has been dead for sixty-seven years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All His Old Haunts

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr, written for [this](http://meghai.tumblr.com/post/66359370502/hello-if-youre-still-looking-for-prompts-how-about-a) prompt (Steve seeing Bucky's "ghost").

It’s 2012—two-thousand-twelve—twenty-twelve—he’s still not sure what sounds right ( _neither,_ because either way, the numbers sound awkward and clunky in his mouth). It’s 2012 and James Barnes has been dead for sixty-seven years. 

But Peggy and two of the Commandos are still around and they visit Arlington with him; if Steve’s being perfectly honest, he doesn’t want to be there at all because it’s an  _empty grave._ They left Bucky’s corpse in Austria, under snow and ice; he’s part of the mountain now, all the way over there, not six feet under the ground Steve stands on.

God, he just wants him  _back._

“It’ll start raining soon,” Peggy says, tugging him away. Steve’s glad to go.

He turns around and sees Bucky lingering by the grave, hands in his pockets. He’s wearing the clothes he died in and when he notices Steve’s gaze, he looks up, salutes.

—

After they dug him out of the ice, they gave him every sort of medical exam conceivable and concluded that he was perfect—his body had simply shut down and reawakened in its previous state.

They were wrong, though. Steve is very, very sick but the last thing he wants is for them to cure him.

“That’s a pretty picture. Your ma, right?”

Bucky’s jacket is half-crusted with ice and his hair is dusted with snow and Steve can’t look at him. It’s not really Bucky, of course not, it’s just the hallucinations of his ice-sick mind, but he’ll take what he can get. Even if it’s hard to look at him.

Bucky leans over his shoulder to get a better look at his sketch. “Yeah, that’s your ma. She’s real pretty.” And then with a playful leer in his voice: “I can see where you get your looks from.”

“Bucky,” Steve says; the name sounds strangled, like it had to crawl out of his throat. Bucky’s talking in a way that’s so carefree, like he talked before the war, like he doesn’t blame Steve at all for failing to catch him (his hand was only two inches away, Steve remembers it clearly, two inches that widened into a mile downward and then sixty-seven years forward).

He draws the Cyclone at Coney next and Bucky laughs. “You’re never gonna forgive me for that, are you?”

Steve rips out the drawing, tosses it away, and Bucky falls silent. They sit in their room—Steve's room—together for an hour before Bucky disappears, listening to the patter of rain against the window, and the sounds of cars zooming past a few stories down, of water splashing up against the sidewalks, gurgling in the gutters. Bucky doesn't breathe and the bed doesn't dip where he sits, but Steve still feels more at peace than he has in ages. 

—

It’s difficult to enjoy a movie or a pretty sunrise or a party without thinking about how much better it would be if Bucky were there. How much Bucky would get a kick out of some of the new action movies—how he’d wrinkle his nose at some of the new fashions and technologies. He stops waking up and forgeting Bucky isn't there, but he sometimes still turns, smile on his face and mouth half-open, like he wants to tell Bucky something. 

He tries Thai food for the first time and thinks,  _I can’t wait to get him to try this_ before he remembers.

“This sauce would probably taste great on a hotdog,” Bucky says, sticking his fingers right into Steve’s curry and licking it off. “We should try it. Is that beef?” Steve spends an embarrassing amount of time just watching him eat. There was never enough food growing up, there was hardly a time where Bucky ate his proper fill without saying,  _Whew,_   _I’m stuffed. You can have the rest of mine._

“Steve. Steve? Rogers, c’mon.” Tony’s looking at him with a raised brow and next to him, Pepper looks vaguely amused. “Did you hear a word of what Natasha just said?”

He sits up straight and hastily apologizes; next to him, Bucky says, “That’s Steve for you—the only time his head isn't up in the clouds is during a fight.” He says it with pride, and steals more of Steve’s curry.

 —

That night, when he crawls into bed, Bucky’s still there. “I’ll watch over you, keep the boogeymen away.”

“You don’t have to.” He startles himself a little because it’s the first time he’s spoken back to him; he doesn’t want to speak because he doesn’t want to talk to himself. Lonely and crazy, talking to an empty room.

Bucky gives him a lazy half-grin. The lights from the passing cars outside catches on it and for a second, Steve can’t breathe (he looks so  _real_ ).

Bucky sits at the foot of his bed. “I spent sixty-seven years watchin’ over you as you slept, pal. Another night isn't gonna kill me.”

Steve desperately wants to believe it’s the truth. And he wants to believe that Bucky—the real Bucky—is still around in all his usual haunts: standing by where Fred’s little grocery shop used to be, sitting in the back of a picture he snuck into, perched on a stool in a bar in Europe before it was bombed out. He should be over it—he shouldn’t still be weeping about it. He shouldn’t still want him back so  _fucking badly_ that his heart hurts with it.

He tries not to cry himself to sleep (he should be done with that), and Bucky remains seated next to him, like he said he’d be, and doesn’t say a word.

 —

He wonders what’ll happen if he tries to touch the hallucination. Steve is afraid of very few things, but he’s afraid of trying. 

He wants to hold Bucky’s hand. His blue-tinged, frostbitten hand. The skin between the fingers of Steve's own hands glows orange-red under the slanted sunlight that filters through the blinds and Steve wants to reach out and let that colour seep into Bucky. 

“I’m afraid my fingers’ll snap off if you try it,” Bucky says, reading him mind because he’s a part of Steve’s mind. He’s still smiling.

—

Sometimes, Steve has good days. Sometimes he goes hours without thinking of Bucky once and later, doesn’t even feel guilty about it because he knows he’ll never,  _ever_ forget Bucky. He’ll still live—as upbeat and loud as he ever was—in all the hollows of the places Steve used to know.

He laughs sometimes—genuinely. Clint says something funny—he can’t even remember what it was, but he laughs so hard tears spring up in his eyes.

There’re six people in the room and suddenly there’s seven. He sees Bucky out of the corner of his eye, leaning back against the kitchen’s island counter. He stares at Clint with a frown and without looking at Steve says, “I don’t even remember the last time you laughed like that.”

Steve’s smile drops of immediately and the other Avengers exchange looks. He tries to smile again but—but they’ve turned to stare at the spot Steve’s fixated on.

Tony says, “Uh, okay,” and Steve makes up an excuse—he just remembered something he forgot to do.

Bucky tries to get him to laugh again for the rest of the day. By the time he gives up, he once again seats himself at the foot of Steve’s bed.

“Goodnight, Steve.”

—

“Give me a kiss,” Bucky says many days later, appearing as Steve does the dishes. He's still wearing his Commando uniform, his skin still blue-tinged. His lips are nearly purple now. “Just like old times, yeah?”

Steve wants to—he  _desperately_ wants to—he wants to hold him and sob into his jacket and tell him he’s  _so fucking sorry._ He stares at him and his lips part, but when Bucky leans in, Steve can see ice clumping his eyelashes together.

He covers his face and in an instant, Bucky’s gone, all over again. He blinks out of existence and Steve wonders if the reason he’s seeing less and less of him is because his tired brain is slowly repairing itself.

He supposes he shouldn’t be upset. It isn’t as if Bucky was truly back in the first place.


End file.
